Overtime Busts

Budget-breaking practices allow some sheriff’s deputies to double their pay.

A SLEIGH LOAD OF MONEY: Multnomah County Sheriff Sgt. Diana Olsen stands with Deputy Don Bryant, dressed as Santa, during a 2009 charity holiday party. Olsen, 57, is one of dozens of department employees to dramatically increase her take-home pay using overtime. Last year, she earned $156,932—67 percent more than her base salary of $93,874. - IMAGE: David Ashton

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Sgt. Diana Olsen has occasionally been the face of the
Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. She heads up the sheriff’s search and
rescue team, and when a 7-year-old Skyline Elementary School student
named Kyron Horman went missing in 2010, Olsen was sometimes on the TV
news providing updates about the hunt for the little boy.

She’s also well known
inside the sheriff’s office for something else: her excessive use of
overtime long after the Horman investigation slowed.

In one six-week
period in the fall of 2011, Olsen claimed an astounding 300 hours
overtime, worth $20,000. Her timecards included one hour of overtime for
buying groceries for a search and rescue team outing, five hours to
take a rifle test she had previously failed, and 10 hours of “policy
review” while at her beach house in Ocean Park, Wash. Only one hour was
charged to the Kyron Horman case.

In
2011, Olsen (who also owns a home in Hawaii) increased her base salary
of $90,879 by 90 percent with overtime, running her pay up to $172,710.
Her practices so concerned sheriff’s officials they rewrote the
department’s overtime policies.

But Olsen, 57, is still bringing in big overtime pay, and she’s not alone.

WW’s analysis
of two years’ worth of payroll and budget records shows the sheriff’s
office has spent more than twice the money budgeted for overtime.

The top 30 overtime earners during 2012 pulled in more than $1.2 million above their regular pay.

Olsen, whose overtime increased her salary by only 67 percent last year, isn’t near the top of 2012’s list.

A civilian facility
security officer worked enough to increase his salary 109 percent. A
deputy sheriff pulled in a 103 percent increase.

And
Daniel Carrithers, a corrections sergeant, used overtime to run up his
base salary of $92,106 to a breathtaking $182,008—making him the
highest-paid employee of Multnomah County, above even county physicians
and medical directors.

Overtime problems
have long plagued the sheriff’s office, which runs the county’s
corrections systems and operates deputy patrols. An annual grand jury
report that oversees county corrections has routinely cited staffing and
overtime issues—and Sheriff Dan Staton, when he ran for office in 2010,
promised to deal with them.

But Staton’s office, halfway through its budget year, has already burned through its $3.6 million overtime budget.

After more than a week of requests for comment, Staton did not make himself available for this story.

Staton instead
referred questions to Chief Deputy Drew Brosh, who says overtime
spending is a result of not having enough deputies to run a 24/7
operation.

“People are working a lot of overtime,” Brosh says, “and earning a lot of money.”

Yet the longstanding
tradition of paying deputies time-and-a-half to cover for a sick jail
guard or a vacationing patrol deputy continues.

“[Olsen] is the
poster child for why public employees get slammed,” says former Capt.
Brett Elliott, who first blew the whistle on her overtime use. “They
refuse to take action with this employee and actually hold her
accountable. It’s a chronic issue, and it is a product of their failure
to get a handle on it.”

Records show corrections division deputies and sergeants
received, on average, a 16 percent pay increase through overtime last
year.

But those averages
doesn’t tell the whole story. A smaller number of deputies, sergeants
and corrections officers—44 in all—succeeded in increasing their base
pay by at least half last year.

Fuavai Tapasa, a
facility security officer who joined the sheriff’s office in 2001, saw
the biggest increase in his pay from overtime, 109 percent, pushing his
pay to $95,243.

The year before, a corrections officer, Shahram Afzal, saw his pay increase by 116 percent, to $152,996.

Then there’s Deputy
Brent Laizure, who on average has doubled his salary for two years
running. His pay hit $142,892 last year (including a $5,013 increase in
his base salary).

But it’s the case of Olsen that caused sheriff’s officials to take action.

Her practices were brought to light by Elliott, who filed a federal whistle-blower lawsuit against the department last May.

Elliott alleged he
was retaliated against and demoted to lieutenant after accusing that
Undersheriff Tim Moore of fabricated documents to earn state law
enforcement certification. A state investigation cleared Moore.
Elliott’s case settled in August, with the department reinstating his
rank of captain and awarding him $80,000. Elliott is now officially
retired from the sheriff’s office.

Elliott detailed
Olsen’s overtime use in a Nov. 28, 2011, memo to higher-ups and called
for an outside investigation into what he called “rampant, freewheeling
overtime.”

“If there is anybody to blame, it was our administration, and me,” he adds. “It is an extravagant amount of overtime.”

Gates
says he reassigned some of Olsen’s duties (she remains search and
rescue coordinator) and rewrote policy to require his written approval
of overtime that goes beyond filling in for another officer’s vacation
or sick leave. Sergeants must also have another sergeant enter overtime
for them.

Olsen did not return multiple requests from WW for comment.

Elliott says he can’t believe Olsen wasn’t disciplined.

“They did nothing
other than change the rules for the future,” Elliott says. “They did
nothing to hold Reiser and Olsen accountable.”

TIME AND HALF—AND MORE

The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office regularly busts its
overtime budgets. More than $1.2 million in extra pay was collected
among the department’s top 30 overtime earners in 2012. Here are the top
five last year, based on percentage increases over their salaries.

SOURCE: Multnomah County

Chief Deputy Brosh says overtime in the sheriff’s office
is necessary because of short staffing in the department, which employs
750.

He says the office is
down by about 15 people in the corrections division and seven in law
enforcement. Those empty posts, coupled with vacations and sick leave,
mean that overtime adds up, he says.

The sheriff’s budget
is a political dance between Multnomah County’s elected commissioners,
who set an overall limit ($120 million this year), and Sheriff Staton,
who’s independently elected and can spend the money as he sees fit.

Staton, despite exceeding his overtime budget, has always spent just under his overall budget, Gates says.

But that money has to
come from somewhere in the sheriff’s budget. Ironically, the first way
to make up for overspending comes from about $2 million in staff
vacancies. Up next, says Gates, is training.

“If it isn’t free and
in town, or if it involves any overtime, I deny it outright,” Gates
says of training, adding that online courses have made training more
efficient.

Brosh says that non-mandatory training, including mental health, public communication, gear and tactics, are the first to go.

The sheriff’s
overtime spending will never hit zero, he notes, but the department is
seeking a balance between paying existing officers extra and hiring more
staff.

“We like to call it ‘the sweet spot,’” Brosh says.

As of now, the
department appears to be in the outer orbit of a sweet spot. The county
commission last year gave the department $888,000 to increase its
staffing.

It’s a work in progress at best.

Finding qualified
corrections and law enforcement officers isn’t easy—every 100 applicants
include maybe three men and women good enough for the job, Brosh says.

That may be far from
enough: The 2012 Multnomah County Corrections Grand Jury report,
released in December, says the office may need to hire up to 85 new
officers before July due to possible retirements.

Once the additional deputies are brought on, Brosh says, the department can test whether it’s got the numbers right.

“Good stewardship of the public’s money,” Gates says, “is always on the forefront of what we do.”

FACT: Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton earned
$142,145 last year. Thanks to overtime, 13 deputies and corrections
officers made more than he did.